Call to Action: Thank the media

[Atlantea]

I find it telling that the decline started IMMEDIATELY after we held the first Unity rally and got the attention of the gaming media!

For a few weeks I was hesitant to say that the ups and downs of the stock indicated whether it was definitely going down in an overall trend or not.

But looking at it now, if you average out the ups and downs, the overall trend is almost a DEAD STRAIGHT LINE down from the peak on Sept 7th.

I'd call THAT a RESULT.

[Rae]

Can I ask everyone to hit the 'recommend' button on this one to bump it up?

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/nc-soft-destroys-online-community-and-wont-tell-anyone-why

I know that a lot of big news outlets source news from nowpublic, and the more interest/recommendations it gets, the more likely it is that someone 'proper' will pick up on it :)

[Atlantea]

Do I have to make an account with them to do this?

[Rae]

I don't think so. There should be a 'thumbs up' icon on the right hand side. It shows up as about halfway down for me.

[Rotten Luck]

I got the recommend button under the facebook stuff.  It was a grey button with a check mark.  Hit it and it turned yellow.

[Atlantea]

Aha. I saw what I was looking for and recommended it!

[Globetrotter]

Found the button, and hit it!

[TimtheEnchanter]

Something weird here. There's a page here, that SHOULD have an article about CoH, and it seems to have been erased from existence. It turns up on Google search and is only a day old, yet even searching from the page itself yields nada. This is the redirect. http://www.nowpublic.com/tag/Culture

The article title according to Google was: "NC Soft destroys an online community - and won't tell anyone why."

[Rae]

It looks as if they've removed it. It was certainly up there a little earlier.
I'll contact them and see if I can find out why :)

ETA: Aaah. Apparently there was a query with it. They emailed me, but since my mail provider inexplicably locked me out two days ago and hasn't sorted it out yet, I never got the email, couldn't reply and nowpublic decided I didn't exist and deleted the article. Grrr. I'll try to repost it when I've got access to my mail again.

[JaguarX]

It looks as if they've removed it. It was certainly up there a little earlier.
I'll contact them and see if I can find out why :)

ETA: Aaah. Apparently there was a query with it. They emailed me, but since my mail provider inexplicably locked me out two days ago and hasn't sorted it out yet, I never got the email, couldn't reply and nowpublic decided I didn't exist and deleted the article. Grrr. I'll try to repost it when I've got access to my mail again.

dang.

[Rae]

no worries. got word of a goodun due to go up soon :)

[CapaDevans]

It looks as if they've removed it. It was certainly up there a little earlier.
I'll contact them and see if I can find out why :)

ETA: Aaah. Apparently there was a query with it. They emailed me, but since my mail provider inexplicably locked me out two days ago and hasn't sorted it out yet, I never got the email, couldn't reply and nowpublic decided I didn't exist and deleted the article. Grrr. I'll try to repost it when I've got access to my mail again.

Here it is, I had issues first time but then I got it via Chrome. This I got from Google cache. PLEASE repost it, it's great:



South Korean games software giant NC Soft has installed a firewall of silence around its plans to close the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game City of Heroes.

Despite petitions, celebrity endorsements and multiple appeals to keep the profitable and popular game alive, and equally strident calls for an explanation, NC Soft has responded to all pleas with a blunt "no comment".

By December 1, the company will have been responsible for closing down a third of all MMOs that have ever been unplugged.

For eight years, the residents of Paragon City, the fictional setting of the massive online role-playing game, City of Heroes have been battling evildoers intent on destroying their world. So perhaps, when NC Soft announced on August 31 that they were pulling the plug on the game and made 80 people at Paragon Studios in Mountain View, California redundant in the process, they shouldn't have been surprised that the people behind the avatars swung into action to save their universe.

The huge campaign was launched, spear-headed by The Titan Network, a group of players dedicated to helping others make their most out of their time in City of Heroes, and it's sister game, City of Villains.

The campaign quickly gained momentum, gaining the support of New York Times best-selling author Mercedes Lackey, Neil Gaiman, Lord of the Rings star Sean Astin, The Guild's Felicia Day and online comic strip Penny Arcade.

Over 21,000 people signed a petition urging NC Soft to reconsider their decision to close the game.

Players engaged in a letter writing campaign, raised the money to buy the developers dinner, sent capes and masks to NC Soft's offices in Austin, Seattle and South Korea, and held a massive unity rally that was quick to gain the attention of the gaming press.

But after weeks of silence, NC Soft issued a response on October 2, when in a statement they claimed they had "exhausted all options including the selling of the studio and the rights to the City of Heroes intellectual property, but in the end, efforts to do so were not successful."

Almost immediately, the City of Heroes community called foul.

They said they knew of at least two investment groups and one studio who had approached NC Soft with offers to buy the City of Heroes franchise, who did not receive a response.

They wanted to know why NC Soft believed it had 'exhausted all options' weeks before the game's scheduled closure on November 30.

We contacted NC Soft, asking for clarification on the statement they issued and giving them the opportunity to respond to claims by the Save COH campaign who took to forums, Facebook and Twitter wanting to know:
What attempts were made to sell Paragon Studios.
What attempts were made to sell the intellectual property rights, and how they were exhausted.
Why a number of potential investors who came forward to try and buy the rights, did not receive a response from NC Soft.
How NC exhausted all the options for the sale of the game, Paragon Studios or the Intellectual Property, given that the game is not due for closure until November 30.
Why NC Soft did not consider combining servers, putting the game in maintenance mode and keeping it running without further developments or updates, or allowing people to create their own, private servers.
Why NC Soft will not to publicly name a price that they would be willing to accept for either Paragon Studios, or City of Heroes itself.

A response was eventually received two weeks later from Lincoln Davis, director of corporate communications at NC Soft's Seattle Office: "I wanted to let you know that we will be declining your interview request as it relates to the sun setting of City of Heroes."

Well. That clears that up, then.

Calling themselves the world's 'premier publisher of MMO games', the South-Korean based video games company includes Lineage, Guild Wars and Aion in their portfolio.

But more recently, they have picked up the unenviable moniker of MMO killer.

Their reputation also took a battering in 2008 after a lengthy court battle with Richard Garriot after the closure of Tabula Rasa, another MMO. Garriott claimed that, while quarantined after a voyage into space, he was fired, then NCSoft presented it as him leaving voluntarily.

Leaving, rather than being fired, meant his stock options expired sooner, and he was forced to sell in what his lawsuit described as "one of the worst equity markets in modern history."

This lost him tens of millions of dollars, Garriott said, and the court agreed, awarding him $28 million in July 2010. NC Soft appealed the decision, but in October last year, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision, with the final figure boosted to $32 million, after adding in interest and attorney's fees accrued during the appeal process.

NC Soft's refusal to say exactly why the game is being closed other than 'a realignment of company focus' and remaining tight-lipped in the media has lead to their customers becoming increasingly more vocal and casting more suspicions on the company's motives and way of operating.

Players argue that the game remained profitable and NC Soft's Investor Relations report for August 2012 show the game had a revenue of $10m-12m a year, and that sales related to City of Heroes remained fairly constant.

The report shows that City of Heroes revenues are just a tiny fraction of NC Soft's incomes when compared to the Asian powerhouses of Aion and Lineage 1 and 2, and that City of Heroes accounts for just two per cent of sales.

Perhaps more tellingly, it shows that their pre-tax income was down 73 per cent year on year, to 18,934 South Korean Won – around US$17 million.

While NC Soft refused to engage with their customers, or shed light on the attempts they claim to have made to prevent the closure of City of Heroes, Tony Vazquez, who has spear-headed the 'save' campaign said: "I strongly feel that NC Soft needs to seriously consider whether what it finds reasonable is, in fact, reasonable.

"When I read that NC Soft feels that it has exhausted all options for keeping City of Heroes active, I find that statement disingenuous at best.

"I feel that I have to point out that this profit from City of Heroes is part of what has made NC Soft's other titles such as Aion and Guild Wars 2 possible by funding their development. Hopefully you can understand the anger and disappointment we felt when a mere three days after Guild Wars 2 launched - a game that our money funded - NC Soft in essence kicked us to the curb and has now repeatedly denied us the basic dignity of continuing to exist as a community.

"While the money we have invested may not give us any legal standing from an ownership perspective, I believe that it does put an ethical onus on NC Soft to do whatever it can to allow the game to remain active."

The City of Heroes franchise is scheduled for 'sunset' on November 30.

You can find out more about the Save City of Heroes campaign at www.savecoh.com. To sign the petition calling for NC Soft to change their minds about the game's closure, visit tinyurl.com/savecoh.

[Mentalshock]

I've begun to wonder:

    What would it take for this campaign to become noticable to the public eye?

[CapaDevans]

I'm hoping for the "disgusted at NC's T&A offering. Binning family entertainment for cartoon porn" reports.

[Rae]

Here it is, I had issues first time but then I got it via Chrome. This I got from Google cache. PLEASE repost it, it's great:

I will admit to being baffled.

On Wednesday, after I emailed that article out, I started getting login failures on my mail.com account that I sent it from, and then when I went to their webmail client, I was told my account had been blocked. Apparently this isn't unusual for mail.com, and a quick google found a whole bunch of people complaining that their accounts were frequently blocked for no apparent reason.

When I went back to nowpublic, it turned out that my account there  (the one I posted that article with) has been either 'blocked or marked inactive'. Unfortunately, as it was registered through my mail.com account, so I have no idea why. I took a browse through their FAQ but I couldn't see where I'd broken any of their golden rules, so I'm a little bemused by it. Until my email account is back, there's not that much I can do about it, but hopefully I can sort that once it's up and running.

Aaanyway...whatever that's all about, I've had some good news from my friend at Starburst and a piece based off the information in that article is currently with their editor and should hopefully be up before too much longer. They are very sympathetic to our cause and grateful to us for the support we've shown their site when they've run articles about City of Heroes.

I said it in the original thread (http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5781.0.html) but I know how fast things scroll around here, so if anyone has press contacts, blogs, or is a citizen journalist, please feel free to take that article, re-write it, make it your own and send it wherever you feel it might get an audience.

[Omali]

Hello again,

I figured I'd post this here rather than create a new thread. I've received a lot of suggestions (both from this forum and through my own channels) to add a section on to my website where players can share thoughts about their most memorable MMO moments. So starting in a week or two (depending on response), I will be starting up a regular addition to MMO Fallout, where players can submit and share their thoughts and memories of gaming. Personally I could fill several books with all the memories I have, so I will be adding my own thoughts to each article.

Most of them will not be themed, but for the first piece I want to focus on NCSoft's shuttered games. If you have any memories (or suggestions for the article) you'd like to share, send them to me via private message or email (contact@mmofallout.com). If you know anyone who would want to take part, feel free to throw them my email.

[Atlantea]

My Latest response in the comments of the EGM article:

Frankly I'm enjoying watching NCSoft's stock continue it's slide down the hole.

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/chart?symbol=036570.KS

I find it quite telling that the upward trend that began just after they announced the closing of Paragon studios was STOPPED DEAD in it's tracks and started a more or less straight line downward almost LITERALLY the day after the Unity Rally with all the torchbearers in-game and the save City of Heroes efforts began.

NCsoft have NO IDEA of the whirlwind they are about to reap in terms of bad publicity. They think it's bad now, wait until November 30th passes and City of Heroes close down the servers for the last time, then the gloves of the former community will truly come off.

To paraphrase Mr. Stark from The Avengers: "If we can't protect Paragon City you can be damn certain we will AVENGE it!"

[Rae]

http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/paragon-studios-answering-heroes.html

[Knightslayer]

http://www.gamerzines.com/mmo/paragon-studios-answering-heroes.html

It was nice to see a site give our devs the recognition they deserve.  ;D

[The White Rager]

Dammit, why didn't I know we had a dedicated 'Save City of Heroes' site already? Under the domain name savecoh no less! That's bloody important, now we have a dedicated hub to send people to, with a nice simple link. Heck, they can even remember the url on their own.